Perhaps the biggest surprise? It makes a useful, miniature all-in-one.

If you've been following our Windows 8 hardware coverage, you know many OEMs have put together some very unique designs attempting to marry touch computing and desktop computing. The majority of these take the form of tablets that slide into keyboard docks. Others are convertible computers with screens that slide or fold down over the keyboard.

Lenovo's IdeaPad Yoga 13 is something different. Rather than folding to cover the keyboard, it has been endowed with an extremely flexible hinge that flips all the way over. This allows you not just to convert the laptop into a tablet, but also to use the base of the laptop as a stand for the screen. The end result is something that doesn't always work, but it hits more often than it misses.

Laptop mode, screen, and build quality

Enlarge/ In laptop mode, the Yoga is practically indistinguishable from a standard Ultrabook. Note both the LCD panel's excellent viewing angles and the uniform, non-tapered base of the laptop.

Andrew Cunningham

Specs at a glance: Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13

Screen

1600×900 at 13.3" (138 ppi)

OS

Windows 8 64-bit

CPU

1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317U (Turbo up to 2.6GHz)

RAM

4GB 1600MHz DDR3 (one slot, upgradeable to 8GB)

GPU

Intel HD Graphics 4000 (integrated)

HDD

128GB solid-state drive

Networking

Single-band 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0

Ports

1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0, HDMI, card reader, headphones

Size

13.1 × 8.9 × 0.67" (333.4 × 224.8 × 16.9 mm)

Weight

3.4 lbs (1.54 kg)

Battery

4-cell Li-polymer

Warranty

1 year

Starting price

$999.99

Other perks

Webcam, volume rocker, screen orientation lock button

In laptop mode, the Yoga 13 looks very much like any old 13-inch Ultrabook. The base of the computer is flat rather than tapered, making it just a bit thicker than entries like the MacBook Air. It is 0.67" thick throughout, while the 13-inch MacBook Air is 0.68" at its thickest point but just 0.11" at its thinnest. So overall the Yoga is still quite slim and attractive. The nicest touch is the lightly textured wrist rest, which feels much easier on the wrists than competing computers' metal wrist rests.

At 3.4 pounds, the Ultrabook is a bit heavier than other computers in its class. It's a weight-class above the aforementioned MacBook Air (2.96 pounds), the Asus Zenbook Prime (2.86 pounds), and a few others. It's not a huge difference, but if you're accustomed to something lighter you'll notice that extra half a pound or so in your bag.

While the size and weight aren't quite at the top of the class, the laptop's touchscreen is a treat. It's a 10-point IPS panel with a 1600×900 resolution and excellent color and viewing angles (see for yourself in some of these pictures). This comes at a price point where manufacturers all too often opt instead to use 1366×768 panels with awful viewing angles. So we're hoping the Yoga signals a trend toward better screens from all the major OEMs. The bezel is a little thick, perhaps owing to the Yoga's intended use as a sometimes-tablet, but that's forgivable for a screen this nice to look at.

Enlarge/ The textured plastic wrist rest felt better on my wrists than the all-metal construction of some other Ultrabooks.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ A Windows button is located under the LCD panel, for use when the laptop is in tablet mode.

Andrew Cunningham

As I discovered when using the Asus VivoTab RT, having a touchscreen to use with Windows 8 is actually pretty nice in a laptop, where your fingers' natural resting position isn't far from the screen. You won't want to be reaching out to touch things all the time, but for switching apps and bringing up the Charms menu it can be a bit easier than the operating system's often-arcane keyboard shortcuts.

The top and the bottom of the laptop are a flat silver plastic with a slightly soft feel to it. As is often the case with plastic laptops, there's a bit of bending and flexing throughout the body, but it still feels reasonably sturdy. The hinge is just slightly wobbly, probably due to its extremely flexible nature. It requires a reasonable amount of force to move, though—there shouldn't be problems with the lid accidentally closing or opening further if you didn't mean it to.

Enlarge/ The top of the case could be mistaken for metal, but it's actually a soft, vaguely rubbery plastic.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ On the left side, the Yoga has an HDMI port, a USB 3.0 port, a headphone jack, a microphone pinhole, and a volume rocker.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ On the right side, there's a screen orientation lock button, an SD card reader, a USB 2.0 port, and the power jack.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The power button and LEDs are on the front edge of the laptop.

Andrew Cunningham

Unfortunately, the selection of ports is a bit lackluster, especially in a 13-inch Ultrabook. There's an HDMI port, an SD card reader, and a headphone jack, but only one USB 3.0 port and one USB 2.0 port despite plenty of room for more. I must once again profess bafflement: why would any PC OEM include USB 2.0 ports in an Ivy Bridge-based notebook before exhausting the four USB 3.0 ports natively supported by Intel's chipset? (Sigh, moving on.) The laptop also includes a volume rocker and a screen orientation lock button for when it's used in tablet mode.

Keyboard and trackpad

The keyboard and trackpad are fairly standard-issue for Lenovo's Ultrabooks. Their chiclet-style keyboard and its not-quite-square keys aren't my favorite to type on, but the key travel is reasonable, and I prefer it to both Dell's and Toshiba's Ultrabook keyboards. Its biggest sin is the lack of a backlight, which is hard to give up if you've ever had one.

The plastic tabs at the top of the keyboard that keep it attached to the rest of the computer are also a bit problematic. The ones on our review unit had a tendency to come loose, introducing some unsightly floppiness to the top third or so of the keyboard. There are tabs nearer to the middle of the keyboard (along with some adhesive) that seem to be made of sterner stuff and prevent it from coming completely unmoored. It's an issue that seriously detracts from the laptop's otherwise solid fit-and-finish.

Enlarge/ The top of the keyboard seemed quite eager to separate from the base of the laptop, resulting in a mushy, unsatisfying typing experience.

Andrew Cunningham

The trackpad is also a bit problematic. As is common in most Ultrabooks, it's a large, clickable multitouch surface free from discrete buttons. The plastic trackpad mostly works as expected—two-finger right-clicking and pinch to zoom both work reasonably well, as do the Windows 8 trackpad gestures for switching apps and invoking the Charms menu—but as some other reviewers have noticed, the shipping drivers have a tendency to become intermittently unresponsive. This issue should be fixable with new drivers, but newer versions aren't yet available on Lenovo's support site. You may be stuck with this problem for a while if you're an early adopter.

I've come to the conclusion that we're better off giving up a hope for crapware not to be loaded by default because even if we wished for no crapware to be installed we'd still have the likes lf Lenovo instating that their 'wireless networking' application is some how required even though the built in tools provided by Windows does the job nicely. Don't get me wrong, I love the Lenovo hardware but one thing that needs to be taken into account is carrying out a clean install once you get the machine because otherwise you'll be in a barrel of hurt.

For the record I have the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon and ThinkCentre M92p.

I've come to the conclusion that we're better off giving up a hope for crapware not to be loaded by default because even if we wished for no crapware to be installed we'd still have the likes lf Lenovo instating that their 'wireless networking' application is some how required even though the built in tools provided by Windows does the job nicely. Don't get me wrong, I love the Lenovo hardware but one thing that needs to be taken into account is carrying out a clean install once you get the machine because otherwise you'll be in a barrel of hurt.

For the record I have the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon and ThinkCentre M92p.

I heard that the X1 Carbon comes with a 'minimal amount of bloatware,' and yet I was very surprised to see just how strongly it urged me to install the Norton protection, to find the rather redundant WIFI manager, power manager (OK, this may be legit to an extent), the App center (WTF is the point of that?), the ever-nagging message center, etc.

The laptop came with 115 processes running. 115! A clean Win7 install should have 60-70 processes running by default (actual number depends on your hardware).

Every computer I bought in the past 5 years underwent the same fate - erase, repartition, reinstall Windows; fortunately, I have legit install disks with codes. If you don't, I've heard that one can get legal Windows install disks from DigitalRiver, but I am not sure if they work with OEM codes.

P.S. A quick search brings up this link: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/21 ... s-7-a.html. Looks like a clean reinstall with the OEM code is a piece of cake. One thing I'd be wary about in that tutorial is running "Belarc Advisor" for an audit of hardware and software, only because I've never heard of that piece of software.

Belarc Adviser is well known utility used to inventory systems. It can run stand alone, or on a network basis, allowing an admin to get a list of hardware components of a single system, as in this case, or to dump it's results into a database for doing software license counts.

Definitely reputable. I used it ten years ago when I was a beginning admin to do license audits at new clients, so that we could get them into compliance.

I'm very disappointed about the storage. That's one of the key aspects consumers look at these days, and if you're selling 128 and delivering 90 (with workarounds) it's plain wrong, and will make a few people reconsider buying the same brand twice. It isn't as much a problem for iOS and Android, because their stuff isn't preloaded with 40 (!) GB of stuff. It seems legally OK, but morally wrong. It seems like what a court would consider the "truth", but not the "full truth".

Personally, I am more interested in a great tablet that can be made more ultrabook-y with the addition of a dock (like the offerings from ASUS...too bad they are so spendy), rather than an ultrabook that tries really hard to be tablet-y. I think the latter paradigm is just destined to fail.

Thinkpads ship the same way, actually. I have a T530 that came with a 128GB SSD, which only had about 70GB free at arrival. After creating recovery media, you can delete the recovery partition, then you can delete the "hibernation" partition, as well as a couple others that I don't even recall the names of.

After updating to Windows 8 on this, I ended up with about 40GB free after installing my dev environment and such -- miktex, cygwin, boost, qt, VS2012, the usual complement of office/acrobat/etc., which is really more than enough space for personal files and such. For the record, this was full installs of all of those tools, including both 32 and 64 bit libraries in release and debug mode for qt and boost. Those alone are pushing 15-20GB of space required. I also prefer to have a large portion of the VS documentation local. Yes, I'm weird, but I'm often disconnected when working.

I continue to be mystified at the flaky trackpad behaviour reported in tests of various otherwise decent laptops. Usually, as here, this is accompanied by a disclaimer that the problem "should" be fixed with new — but not yet available! — drivers.

WTF? How long have trackpads been standard issue now? Apple gets this right, so why can't Lenovo, Asus and the others?

Why would anyone buy a laptop with a partially non-functional trackpad? I just don't get it.

Personally, I am more interested in a great tablet that can be made more ultrabook-y with the addition of a dock (like the offerings from ASUS...too bad they are so spendy), rather than an ultrabook that tries really hard to be tablet-y. I think the latter paradigm is just destined to fail.

You should look at the Samsung ATIV SmartPC Pro. I picked one up at a Microsoft store a few days ago and I'm loving it! It has a detachable keyboard/dock and can be used as a pure tablet. It is pricey though.

I've always thought that current tablet offerings are universally too small for me. I've been waiting to put my hands on a 13-14" tablet before I consider one, so I appreciate where they're going with this. I'm also a bit leery of having the keyboard exposed all the time, but I'd be willing to give it a shot.

I can't really imagine there being that much of a difference between 3 pounds and 3.5 pounds. My current laptop is a bit over 12 pounds, and I still hold it with one hand and type with the other fairly often. I'd really prefer that companies not zealously chase weight savings at the expense of performance or usability.

"The IdeaPad Yoga strikes a more or less an acceptable compromise, unless you're looking for a tablet. "

IMO this is the right way to stack the compromise on more powerful devices. Ivy bridge devices are going to make fairly mediocre tablets anyway, so it is best to not compromise their laptop capabilities.

I continue to be mystified at the flaky trackpad behaviour reported in tests of various otherwise decent laptops. Usually, as here, this is accompanied by a disclaimer that the problem "should" be fixed with new — but not yet available! — drivers.

WTF? How long have trackpads been standard issue now? Apple gets this right, so why can't Lenovo, Asus and the others?

Why would anyone buy a laptop with a partially non-functional trackpad? I just don't get it.

If MS would devote some of its resources to implementing a flawless reference driver for trackpads, and make it freely available to manufacturers, I, for one, would support Ballmer for a Nobel Prize.

"The IdeaPad Yoga strikes a more or less an acceptable compromise, unless you're looking for a tablet. "

IMO this is the right way to stack the compromise on more powerful devices. Ivy bridge devices are going to make fairly mediocre tablets anyway, so it is best to not compromise their laptop capabilities.

"The IdeaPad Yoga strikes a more or less an acceptable compromise, unless you're looking for a tablet. "

IMO this is the right way to stack the compromise on more powerful devices. Ivy bridge devices are going to make fairly mediocre tablets anyway, so it is best to not compromise their laptop capabilities.

The more tablet oriented designs should be Atom powered.

I think you're right about that. The convertibles that sacrifice laptop functionality to add on mediocre tablet functionality are less forgivable.

It's a tablet/laptop hybrid. Why would you want to have it tethered with a cable?

For places without wifi, like my job, and for large file transfers. Copying a 4.7GB movie rip is painful over wireless, even at N speeds.

And then,there's occasions where WiFi refuses to work - ie Ubuntu needing me to connect to the internet,so the WiFi I want to use to connect to the internet can work The funny thing is that my hardware isn't exactly boutique,but apparently the end of the world will come and go before we see decent and thoroughly debugged broadcom supportEdit - and before someone points out that this was once upon a time.. the last occasion I had to solve this particular problem was a couple of weeks back with the current LTS. Thank <insert deity> that I could just hookup my NoteII and use it as a temporary wifi card

I actually turned an old 15 inch laptop to an all in one like that. The battery was shot, the hinge flaccid and the keyboard broken. Simply unscrew the hinge so it opens further, rotate the screen 180 degrees in display settings and add a keyboard and mouse. It kept the hardware cooler too as a bonus.

The use of Torx should always be interpreted as "abandon all warranties ye who enter here."

A shame, I'd much rather a device use all torx screws. They're so much nicer to work with than Phillips-head (and if you're specifying flat-heads? Put down the CAD package, and step away from the manufacturing business).

I continue to be mystified at the flaky trackpad behaviour reported in tests of various otherwise decent laptops. Usually, as here, this is accompanied by a disclaimer that the problem "should" be fixed with new — but not yet available! — drivers.

WTF? How long have trackpads been standard issue now? Apple gets this right, so why can't Lenovo, Asus and the others?

Why would anyone buy a laptop with a partially non-functional trackpad? I just don't get it.

If MS would devote some of its resources to implementing a flawless reference driver for trackpads, and make it freely available to manufacturers, I, for one, would support Ballmer for a Nobel Prize.

Yoga 13 owner here. I can verify the flakiness of the trackpad. Sometimes, the mouse pointer just vanishes, and I have to use the touchscreen to finish what I was doing!

It's doubly funny that, to turn off tap-to-click (I prefer actually clicking a button), you go into the Desktop Mode, then into the Desktop Control Panel, then into the Synaptics Touch Control. There is is, in all its glory, the Synaptics UI, left totally unchanged since at least Windows 2000, maybe Win98. I was honestly shocked to see it. And people wonder why it's flaky. Sheesh.

Both these issues are known by Lenovo, both require the IT two-step (turning it off and on again), and both are "waiting for driver fixes."

This is the first Windows laptop I've bought in six years. Yes, Win8 got me interested, and so did the new form factors. But after a series of MacBook Pros, the half-assed trackpad performance left me shaking my head, as did the reboots. I *might* reboot my MBP twice a month.

On the other hand, the MS Surface I got for testing is a phenomenal piece of hardware. So, please, no Apple flames here. I like Win8 a lot. I think the Surface Pro will hit a sweet spot for a lot of folks, me included.

There's a lot to like about the Yoga, truly. Just don't buy one for a non-tech person, yet.

The use of Torx should always be interpreted as "abandon all warranties ye who enter here."

A shame, I'd much rather a device use all torx screws. They're so much nicer to work with than Phillips-head (and if you're specifying flat-heads? Put down the CAD package, and step away from the manufacturing business).

The use of Torx should always be interpreted as "abandon all warranties ye who enter here."

A shame, I'd much rather a device use all torx screws. They're so much nicer to work with than Phillips-head (and if you're specifying flat-heads? Put down the CAD package, and step away from the manufacturing business).

Totally yes. Torx is awesome, torx is good.

And Torx drivers are readily available. I got my set at a local Sears, so there's really no excuse.

The use of Torx should always be interpreted as "abandon all warranties ye who enter here."

A shame, I'd much rather a device use all torx screws. They're so much nicer to work with than Phillips-head (and if you're specifying flat-heads? Put down the CAD package, and step away from the manufacturing business).

Totally yes. Torx is awesome, torx is good.

And Torx drivers are readily available. I got my set at a local Sears, so there's really no excuse.

What are the ones called that are Torx with the hole in the middle? Security Torx? Those are the ones that say "keep out" to me.

Recently bought a ThinkPad Edge and it would fail to update Win 7 through Windows Updates. I called Lenovo and they said they had a known bug (unsolved) with random systems. They then promptly mailed me a new set of DVDs to reimage to a slightly older version of the image. Worked beautifully.

Makes me think that maybe, Lenovo is struggling slightly in the driver department. I'm betting it was a corrupted driver myself.

I've been using a Yoga 13 for just over a week and have been pleasantly surprised. Windows 8 almost makes sense on it due to the touch support and the various convertible configurations.

For my real work though, mostly programming and some content creation, I'll be sticking with Windows 7 and OS X--not Windows 8.

I have also been working with a Microsoft Surface with Windows RT and I don't find the Surface to be a a good replacement for a tablet or a laptop. It's something in between, that for me at least, doesn't seem to fill either need very well. I guess the included MS Office on RT could be a plus for some, but I think it's handicapped by the slow speed of the device, limited storage capability, and modest keyboard.

At this point, for a tablet, I would still recommend an iPad or an Adroid tablet or even a Kindle Fire or a Nook Tablet, but for someone looking for an very portable laptop with touch, I would suggest a look at the Yoga 13.

I have also been working with a Microsoft Surface with Windows RT and I don't find the Surface to be a a good replacement for a tablet or a laptop. It's something in between, that for me at least, doesn't seem to fill either need very well. I guess the included MS Office on RT could be a plus for some, but I think it's handicapped by the slow speed of the device, limited storage capability, and modest keyboard.

I'm in the same boat, except I do a lot of remote support. I like the Surface RT, but I need the Surface Pro instead. Office RT does not support VB Script, which I need for line-of-business Excel documents.